Many of us have decided to live our life according to God’s Word. We want to keep His commandments, do His will and not our own will. We know that God wants the best for our life, and therefore we want to do what is written in the Bible.
We’re glad we took this decision, but maybe some of us still feel sometimes like we are just going in circles without actually getting anywhere. This isn’t how our Christian life is supposed to be, is it?
We read in Psalm 23:2 (CEV), “You let me rest in fields of green grass. You lead me to streams of peaceful water.” But why don’t we have this same rest, this total peace? We maybe do experience that we have a certain degree of rest, because we know that God is with us. That makes us happy in a way. But it’s still not how the Bible describes it should be. Why do we feel this unrest?
The answer is found in the Bible, as always. In Isaiah 59:8 (GNT), we read: “No one is safe when you are around. Everything you do is unjust. You follow a crooked path, and no one who walks that path will ever be safe.”
Are we walking on a crooked path?
Are we walking on a crooked path? What is meant by a “crooked path”? A crooked path is a path that is not straight, it leads nowhere, it’s twisted, dishonest, false etc. Is this what we’re busy doing? Could it be that we’re walking on crooked paths?
It’s dishonest to try to hide our sins, and most Christians have a habit of doing that. They find that they sometimes want to cover up things that are not right in their lives. It’s hard to simply let go of what we want, to give it up and live as God’s Word says we should. We often hold on to what we want, even when we know very well that we need to give it up.
It could be that we don’t dare to give certain things in our life totally over to God – we’re just too afraid to lose control. Even though we’re tired of making a mess of things the whole time, and have decided to leave everything in God’s hands, it’s very tempting to hold on to a little bit of the control. If we see that we are being selfish, for example, it’s tempting to ignore this, because we actually want to think about ourselves a little, and then we don’t want to take a firm decision against it – not now, anyway.
“Not today. I’ll do it later. I’m going through a bit of a difficult time right now, so…” It is precisely those kinds of thoughts that lead us away on crooked paths! Those paths lead nowhere. They slow down the progress in our lives. They are crooked, twisted paths and it’s easy to get lost. And if we do get lost, it can be difficult to find our way back to the path that God has actually prepared for us.
Even if we are lucky enough to get back on the right path, we will have used an unnecessarily long time just to get back to where we were before we got lost. What a waste!
Real peace comes from walking on the right path
Walking on such dangerous crooked paths brings a lot of unrest. To have real peace in our heart, we have to make sure that we are walking in the right direction, on God’s ways, and not wasting our time on other crooked paths. Therefore, we need to stop covering up the sins we know we have to stop with. We must put an end to it – every little bit of evil thoughts, all selfishness etc.
In 2 Timothy 2:5 (GNT) it’s written, “An athlete who runs in a race cannot win the prize unless he obeys the rules.” We have to hold ourselves to God’s Word, without trying to cheat, then we won’t have any reason to have a guilty conscience. Then we can be at peace, because we know we are on the right way. And this way is bright and clear and simple.